The Magic Hour Read online

  ‘You stupid young arse! Didn’t you learn anything from what happened at your last position? Didn’t you learn nothing from that sacking?’

  Tom tried to look surprised and failed miserably.

  ‘I – she—’

  ‘You, she, me and the gatepost! And every other darn thing. Wipe that lipstick off your mouth and get back on your bike, back to your lodgings.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Blakemore, really I am—’

  Mr Blakemore had never looked bigger, his features never so large, his hands seeming quite ready to strangle Tom for his stupidity.

  ‘No, you’re not, but you soon will be if you don’t keep your hands off of her ladyship.’

  Tom stared at the Head Gardener, bewildered by the ferocity of his fury.

  ‘Lady Florazel’s the Duke’s sister. You start taking off your trews wiv her and you’ll find yourself in the bottom of the lake. Now get back to your lodgings. There’s an urgent message waiting for you.’

  Gentlefolk

  A warm breeze was blowing across from the sea when Alexandra walked up the area steps from her flat in the basement of Mrs Smithers’s house dressed in a sober black dress and carrying a mixture of freshly washed aprons, some floral, some starched white. She turned her key in the Yale lock of the door and walked ino the main house, ready to do battle with the household chores.

  ‘Ah there you are, Alexandra. Good morning to you, and a very lovely morning it looks to be.’

  Mrs Smithers’ small, precisely suited figure always seemed to be coming downstairs to greet Alexandra as she came into the house. More than that she always seemed to be paused on exactly the same step as the one from which she had last greeted Alexandra the day before, and at exactly the same time, giving her maid-of-all-work the impression that she must wait there purposefully posed, perhaps listening for the BBC announcer on her old pre-war large mahogany wireless set to announce the time of nine o’clock, thus enabling her to catch Alexandra out, prove that she was late by a few seconds.

  Thankfully Mrs Smithers had never yet caught her maid-of-all-work arriving late, for Alexandra always made it her business to be ahead of time, having first walked the spaniels along the front to the beach, and from there, in and around the many garden squares that made up the seaside town of Deanford.

  ‘In Deanford people expect pre-war standards. We all do, just remember that. Deanford still has standards, unlike other places. It is something that I could never get into the previous maid’s head. Standards. That is why the house went to rack and ruin under her aegis. She had no standards. So few people do nowadays.’

  Mrs Smithers always made this same speech as she watched Alexandra dusting and hoovering, or struggling to cope with the cobwebs that nestled among the intricate plasterwork bordering the high ceilings of her tall, many-floored Regency house with its sea views and elegant, palely painted exterior.

  This particular morning Mrs Smithers yet again stated her maxim about Deanford and its pre-war standards before settling herself on a ruby-coloured mock-eightenth-century damask sofa, one of a pair set each side of the unlit fire, but not before she had taken care to switch off the wireless, as she always did the moment Alexandra entered the drawing room, as if she was afraid something might be broadcast that would not be suitable listening for a youthful maid-of-all-work.

  ‘Alexandra, I have to tell you something of importance today.’

  She cleared her throat, holding a heavily ringed hand up to her mouth, preparing for what was obviously going to be a new announcement. She stared down at the jabot of starched lace that she always wore in the top of her jacket and then carefully flicked it to make it sit up, indicating with a slight nod of her head that Alexandra should leave her dusting and come over to her side of the room. This Alexandra did, her heart sinking, as she imagined from the grave tone being used by her employer that she must in some way have fallen below the now famous pre-war Deanford standards.

  ‘The time has come to tell you, I do not think that I can go on calling you Alexandra. The name is not suitable for a maid-of-all-work, for many reasons, but most of all because, as you know, there is a statue of dear Queen Alexandra in the centre of our gardens here. It just does not seem right, therefore.’ She paused. ‘It is confusing, to say the least, for myself and my friends to have you, the maid-of-all-work, so obviously from a genteel background, also share the same name as the square, so I have decided to rechristen you with a more suitable name. I toyed first with Maggie, and then with Tilly, but have finally settled on Minty. A nice fresh name for a maid, I think you will agree.’

  Alexandra accepted this statement in silence, the way that she found she had come to accept all Mrs Smithers’s announcements.

  ‘Yes, my dear friend, the Honourable Martita Hooper-Spenser, she and I decided yesterday when she took tea with me here – and by the way she much enjoyed your Victoria sponge – yes, we decided that Minty would be a very good maid’s name for you. So Minty you will be, and I hope that you will be happy to be so called while living under my roof at number thirty-two.’

  Alexandra nodded. She really did not care if Mrs Smithers called her Fishface, just so long as she paid her on Saturday mornings and gave her a half-day on Sunday afternoon so that she could take the dogs up to the Sussex Downs, for although her initiation into keeping house for Mrs Smithers had been just a little too real, she was now, after many weeks of hard labour, getting some sense of order not only into Mrs Smithers’s household, but into her own life.

  It had not been easy. Starting in the basement into which she had been consigned, she had had to struggle with mouse-traps, grime, evil-smelling drains and windows that had probably not been washed since the Crimean War. Working her way up through the house she had made constant use of a pair of old-fashioned stepladders, placing a plank between them so that she could, in the manner of decorators, wash and clean areas that would otherwise have been well out of her reach. At last – after hours and hours of cleaning, taking down lace curtains that were repellent with the claustrophobic smell of the dust of too many years, removing heavy velvet and brocade curtains and taking them to the dry cleaners, and scrubbing covers and rugs – at last the main house had started to appear as clean as it had always been beautiful.

  Meanwhile her employer, as always immaculately dressed, sat by watching with evident fascination the daily grind, the flurry of activity, the energetic wielding of the mops and the dusters by her maid-of-all-work. She watched with such detached interest that Alexandra, now Minty, had the feeling that Mrs Smithers did not hold herself at all responsible for the terrible state of her house. It was as if the spiders and the mice, the flies and the woodlice had held Mrs Smithers at gunpoint during the past months, and that she had been forced to sit by watching a foreign army march all over her kingdom while she, poor defenceless old lady that she was, could do nothing until she had found a new and more energetic maid-of-all-work.

  ‘So, Minty it is from now on,’ Mrs Smithers stated, half to herself, and then she glanced at the clock. She liked to have her coffee served to her on a tray at ten-thirty, silver pot polished and shining, a doily under the biscuits on the plate. Unfortunately there was still an hour and a quarter to go.

  Alexandra continued to dust, moving every ornament carefully, and then equally carefully replacing it without making a noise. Mrs Smithers hated noise of any kind. Mrs Smithers liked to be able to part the long net curtains at her drawing-room windows and watch the people who passed by in the square, undisturbed by the noise of Alexandra at work. The hoovering must always be done after eleven o’clock in the morning when Mrs Smithers took her morning constitutional around the square, cautiously breathing in the healthy ozone of the sea air, while not venturing too near to the briny itself.

  The post always came at ten o’clock and was served half an hour later on the coffee tray. For this daily ceremony Alexandra changed her workaday flowered apron for a starched white lace-trimmed one, being sure always to pick the pos
t from the wire box on the other side of the handsome front door and take it up to her employer in a neat pile.

  It is just like being in a play, she had written to Frances Chisholm, but more a comedy than a tragedy I would say! You should see me in my black dress and pinny, and on the days I serve lunch I even have to wear a little starched hat.

  It was one of many long letters that she had written over previous months to Frances Chisholm, longing to hear her news, and news of Cherrypan and the other horses, of life at the stables; but Frances never replied, so that finally Alexandra gave up, realising that she must no longer be of any interest to her old friend.

  She also wrote to her father, being sure to mention Kay, but he too never replied, which was hardly surprising since he had never been a letter writer and found it hard enough even to pen a postcard.

  ‘Like the Mer-Mer-Mer-Millington girls, I am not interesting to my father any more, I’m from the fer-first marriage,’ she told the two dogs as she stroked them, ‘and we all ner-ner-know what that means – ner-nothing.’

  Today she served the coffee punctually as usual, the letters propped against the silver pot, and stood back to await further orders. Since there were none she slipped gratefully out of the room, and went to the dining room where she proceeded to lay lunch for two. Yesterday Mrs Smithers had entertained the Hon. Martita, today it would be some other lady of indeterminate age and grand or genteel manners who would be eating her way delicately through Alexandra’s fish pie and queen of puddings.

  She began to lay out the requisite fish forks and knives, the dessert spoons for the apple tart, and small knives for the cheese and celery, when there was a sound from the first-floor drawing room above. A cry that could only be described as suppressed, but not suppressed enough for Alexandra not to be aware that it must be her employer, and she must be in some considerable distress.

  ‘I am ruined, I am ruined, my shares worth nothing, my husband’s company has gone bankrupt. I am ruined Alex—Minty. I am quite ruined, Minty.’

  Alexandra hurried into the room to find Mrs Smithers standing holding the mantelpiece and breathing in and out too hard and too quickly, her hand to her chest. The moment she saw her maid-of-all-work she stopped and immediately turned to the mirror above the fire to check her hair and her lace jabot, before sinking back on to one of the plum-coloured brocade sofas.

  ‘What to do? What to do?’ she moaned to Alexandra who, actually not knowing quite what to do, took one of her hands and started patting it gently, which she imagined was what might be necessary in the circumstances.

  ‘Sal volatile, in my handbag,’ she murmured after a few seconds.

  Alexandra handed her the old black gold-initialled crocodile bag, which Mrs Smithers always kept close to her side. Then, feeling as if she was robbing her, Alexandra reached dutifully into the handbag and finding a small phial held it out to her employer who promptly and quite elegantly sniffed at its contents, before carefully replacing it and snapping the handbag shut.

  ‘What’s to be done?’ she asked Alexandra, a most pathetic look in her eye. ‘What’s to be done? I will have to sell the house, my home will have to go, the place where I have lived for over forty years. Housing has not recovered, nothing has recovered, and now I too will not recover, and all this with the Dowager Lady Inisheen, late of Muldover Castle, coming to luncheon. I shall hardly be able to give her a glass of sherry without breaking down.’

  Since Alexandra had twice had to escort the Dowager home very much the worse for wear on account of too much sherry from Mrs Smithers’s pre-war glass decanter – not to mention the Hon. Martita who was more than partial to too much gin – she knew their various lodgings to be places that were, at any rate from the outside, shockingly down-at-heel. So, all in all, Alexandra was well aware that Mrs Smithers’s concern was not without foundation.

  ‘We mustn’t tell anyone.’ Mrs Smithers was now rallying. ‘You know that, Minty? It must be strictly between ourselves. Until such time that I can pull myself together, no one must know, but no one.’

  ‘No, of cer-cer-course not,’ Alexandra agreed, feeling very much as she had done when she had been left to look after her grandmother. ‘We will ter-ter-tell no one, no one at all.’

  There was a long silence, and then remembering the awful last days of her beloved old relative, her mouth set. She would not, must not, let such a thing happen twice.

  ‘On the-the-the other hand, Mrs Smithers, mer-mer-ma’am, we could make sure that we der-der-do think of something, der-der-double quick.’

  In keeping with the look in her eyes the tone of Alexandra’s voice must have changed because Mrs Smithers stared at her, surprised. She had never thought to hear dear Minty speaking with quite such quiet authority, despite her poor old hesitation.

  ‘Do you think we can, Minty?’ she asked, faintly.

  ‘I ner-ner-know we can. You are not to be ter-ter-turned from your house of forty years,’ Alexandra told her. ‘No one should be ter-ter-turned out of their house because of someone else’s fer-foolishness. Obviously your husband’s company has been mismanaged, and that is ner-ner-not your fault. You will stay in your own home, no mer-matter what. I will see to it,’ she finished with a flourish.

  Mrs Smithers went to say something and then stopped.

  ‘Do you think we could think of something, some way to cope?’ she finally asked.

  ‘I ner-know we can,’ Alexandra told her briskly, straightening up the cushions on the sofa opposite her, and as she did so suddenly remembering the awful sides of the bed in which her grandmother had been locked every night, and in which she had finally died. ‘Stop worrying, mer-ma’am, you will ner-not have to leave your home. It is not going to happen to you, ma’am, really, it is ner-not.’

  Mrs Smithers gave a small smile. She loved being called ma’am, and they both knew it.

  ‘I suppose there might be a way,’ she said, sadly, but the look in her eye was not one of conviction, and she sat back to wait for her friend the Dowager to arrive, which she did, almost too promptly, at twelve-thirty.

  Lady Inisheen always arrived wearing precisely what she had worn for luncheon at Mrs Smithers’s house the previous week. Her permanent costume was a pre-war shaved-beaver coat, and matching beaver hat, which resembled an RAF cap, worn perched slightly forward, touching her forehead. From under her hat it could be seen that her eyelids were made up with transparent Vaseline that gave them a becomingly shiny look, and her eyelashes combed black with mascara. Her startlingly white face was heavily powdered and her cheeks, in contrast to the powder, heavily rouged. Her thin lips were made up over their natural line, apparently in an effort to give them a fuller look.

  While Alexandra took the shaved-beaver coat from her and draped it over the hall chair with appropriate reverence, Lady Inisheen, as always, checked her face in the mirror, adding more lipstick to her mouth, lipstick that, Alexandra knew, would then decorate everything from her cigarette to her drinks glass with a scarlet bow.

  ‘If my ler-lady would cer-care to follow me upstairs?’ Alexandra asked.

  Lady Inisheen nodded briskly and maid and guest both travelled smartly up to the first-floor drawing room as if there was so much business to be done in the next two hours they must hurry to it.

  ‘My dear.’

  ‘My dear.’

  Mrs Smithers and Lady Inisheen, as was their custom, kept their lips intact, avoiding any intimacy other than a very slight kissing sound either side of each other’s heads, before sinking down onto the damask-covered, gilded sofas, placed as always either side of the now gently flickering coal fire.

  ‘Any sign of you-know-who?’

  Mrs Smithers always said this, every week, but only after allowing some minutes’ desultory conversation to pass. Even Alexandra, handing round glasses of sweet sherry on her highly polished silver salver, now knew that when her employer said this she was referring to Lady Inisheen’s elderly, widowed ex-lover whom both women deeply suspected might
have gone off in search of pastures new, instead of, as all widowers are meant to do, doing his duty by his long-time mistress and marrying her.

  ‘Not a note from him, not a telephone call either, but then the old devil never was any good at writing or telephoning. He is, to say the least, on the careful side. I have known him spend hours erasing traces of a Post Office mark on a stamp in the hopes of reusing it. He was born wealthy, as a result of which he has always been very money-conscious, not to mention careful to the point of insanity, as so many are.’

  ‘He’ll ask you up to London soon. He’s bound to. Any minute now you will hear from him, I am quite sure.’

  This part of their weekly discussion always ended with Mrs Smithers attempting to console her friend, but so far as Alexandra could gather the call to Lady Inisheen from her lover had not yet been made, as a result of which her ladyship, like some ghostly figure on a far-off shore waiting for a friendly ship to pass and hear her shouts for help, never quite lost hope.

  Lunch on this particular morning proceeded at a brisk pace, so brisk in fact that Alexandra began to suspect that Mrs Smithers wanted to get through the whole business as quickly as possible so that she could return to her drawing room, sit in front of the fire, and pick Alexandra’s brains as to how best to cope with her disastrous financial position.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Lady Inisheen started to open and shut her aged handbag, making an irritating and constant clicking sound, which was almost worse than a dripping tap. This too Alexandra was used to, knowing that it always preceded her ladyship plucking up her courage to ask Mrs Smithers for the use of her writing desk and, by happy coincidence, her writing paper too.

  ‘Sweet of you, so sweet of you, Audrey; saves me the boredom of going home,’ she murmured as usual, having quickly seated herself at Mrs Smithers’s elegant little writing desk and written a number of notes to various acquaintances in London and the South of France on Mrs Smithers’s writing paper. ‘I can post them on the corner, and then take a constitutional. You are a dear, Audrey, really you are.’